“To be candid,” he said, as he stood stroking his chin, which bristled with open disregard for appearances under stress of more important things--“to tell you the whole truth, Miss Helen, I don't like the lay of the land.” Then he told her that the sheriff had just informed him of the whispered rumor that a body of men had met Carson Dwight and his charge near the State line about three o'clock in the morning. What had taken place the sheriff didn't know, beyond the fact that the men had disbanded and returned to their homes all gravely uncommunicative. What it meant no one but the participants knew. To face the facts, it looked very much as if harm had really come to one, if not to both, of the two. The mob had evidently been wrought to a high pitch of resentment for the trick Carson had played in stealing the prisoner from jail, and this second attempt to get him away may have enraged his enemies to outright violence against him, especially as Dwight was a fighting man and very hot-headed when roused. Unable to discuss the matter in her depressed frame of mind, Helen left him and went home. The whole story being now out, she found her father warmly excited and disposed to talk about it in all its phases, the earliest as well as the latest, but she had no heart for it, and after urging the Major not to speak of it to Linda she went supperless to her room. Two hours passed. The dusk had given way to the deeper darkness of evening. The moon had not yet risen and the starlight from a partly clouded sky was not sufficiently luminous to aid the vision in reaching any considerable distance, and yet from one of the rear windows of her room, where she stood morosely contemplative, she could see the vague outlines of Linda's cottage. It was while she was looking at the doorway of the little domicile, which stood out above the shrubbery of the rear garden as if dimly lighted from a candle within, that she saw something which caused her heart to suddenly bound. It was the live coal of a cigar, and the smoker seemed to be leaving the cottage, passing through the little gateway, and entering her father's grounds. What more natural than for Carson, if he had returned safely, to go at once to the mother of the boy with the news? Helen almost held her breath. She would soon be reasonably sure, for if it were Carson he would take a diagonal direction to reach the gateway to the Dwight homestead. Was it Carson, or--could it be her father? Her heart sank over the last surmise, and then it bounded again, for the coal of fire, fitfully flaring, was moving in the direction prayed for. Down the stairs Helen glided noiselessly, lest the Major hear her, and yet rapidly. When she reached the front veranda and descended the steps to the grass of the lawn she was just in time to see the red disk passing through the gateway to Dwight's. No form was visible, and yet she called out firmly and clearly: “Carson! Carson!” The coal of fire paused, described a curve,